Abstract

Small and medium sized obstacles such as rocks, small boulders, bricks left unattended on the road can pose hazards for autonomous as well as human driving situations. Many times these objects are too small on the road and go unnoticed on depth and point cloud maps obtained from state of the art range sensors such as 3D LIDAR. We propose a novel algorithm that fuses both appearance and 3D cues such as image gradients, curvature potentials and depth variance into a Markov Random Field (MRF) formulation that segments the scene into obstacle and non obstacle regions. Appearance and depth data obtained from a ZED stereo pair mounted on a Husky robot is used for this purpose. While identifying true positive obstacles such as rocks, large stones accurately our algorithm is simultaneously robust to false positive sources such as appearance changes on the road, papers and road markings. High accuracy detection in challenging scenes such as when the foreground obstacle blends with the background road scene vindicates the efficacy of the proposed formulation.

Abstract

Real time calculation of inverse kinematics (IK) with dynamically stable configuration is of high necessity in humanoid robots as they are highly susceptible to lose balance. This paper proposes a methodology to generate joint-space trajectories of stable configurations for solving inverse kinematics using Deep Reinforcement Learning (RL). Our approach is based on the idea of exploring the entire configuration space of the robot and learning the best possible solutions using Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG). The proposed strategy was evaluated on the highly articulated upper body of a humanoid model with 27 degree of freedom (DoF). The trained model was able to solve inverse kinematics for the end effectors with 90% accuracy while maintaining the balance in double support phase.

Abstract

Efficient and real time segmentation of color images has a variety of importance in many fields of computer vision such as image compression, medical imaging, mapping and autonomous navigation. Being one of the most computationally expensive operation, it is usually done through software implementation using high-performance processors. In robotic systems, however, with the constrained platform dimensions and the need for portability, low power consumption and simultaneously the need for real time image segmentation, we envision hardware parallelism as the way forward to achieve higher acceleration. Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are among the best suited for this task as they provide high computing power in a small physical area. They exceed the computing speed of software based implementations by breaking the paradigm of sequential execution and accomplishing more per clock cycle operations by enabling hardware level parallelization at an architectural level. In this paper, we propose three novel architectures of a well known Efficient Graph based Image Segmentation algorithm. These proposed implementations optimizes time and power consumption when compared to software implementations. The hybrid design proposed, has notable furtherance of acceleration capabilities delivering atleast 2X speed gain over other implementations, which henceforth allows real time image segmentation that can be deployed on Mobile Robotic systems.

Abstract

Field Programmable Gate Arrays(FPGA) exceed the computing power of software based implementations by breaking the paradigm of sequential execution and accomplishing more per clock cycle by enabling hardware level parallelization at an architectural level. As has been proved in already published research works, introducing parallel architectures for a computationally intensive algorithm like Rapidly Exploring Random Trees(RRT) will result in an exploration that is fast, dense and uniform. FPGA based combinatorial architecture, which is one of the already published research works, delivers superlative speed-up but consumes very high power. The second of the already published research works, FPGA based hierarchical architecture, delivers relatively lower speed-up with acceptable power consumption levels. To combine the qualities of both, a hybrid architecture, that encompasses both combinatorial and hierarchical architecture, is designed. To determine the design parameters of the hybrid architecture, a cost function comprised of fundamentally inversely related speed-up and power parameters, as mentioned above, is formulated. This maximization of cost function, with its associated constraints, is then mathematically solved using a modified branch and bound, that leads to optimal deduction of the design parameters of the hybrid architecture. Via empirical experiments, it is observed that this hybrid architecture delivers the highest performance-per-watt out of the three architectures for differential, quad-copter and fixed wing kinematics, in environments of varying geometric complexity. The empirical experiments also confirmed that the hybrid architecture is scalable with 1.) Increase in the environment's geometric complexity and 2.) Increase in kinematic complexity of the robot.

Abstract

This paper presents a novel design of an Omnidirectional bendable Omnicrawler module-CObRaSO. Along with the longitudinal crawling and sideways rolling motion, the performance of the OmniCrawler is further enhanced by the introduction of Omnidirectional bending within the module, which is the key contribution of this paper. The Omnidirectional bending is achieved by an arrangement of two independent 1-DOF joints aligned at 90? wrt each other. The unique characteristic of this module is its ability to crawl in Omnidirectionally bent configuration which is achieved by a novel design of a 2-DOF roller chain and a backbone of a hybrid structure of a soft-rigid material. This hybrid structure provides compliant pathways for the lug-chain assembly to passively conform with the orientation of the module and crawl in Omnidirectional bent configuration, which makes this module one of its kind. Furthermore, we show that the unique modular design of CObRaSO unveils its versatility by achieving active compliance on an uneven surface, demonstrating its applications in different robotic platforms (an in-pipeline robot, Quadruped and snake robot) and exhibiting hybrid locomotion modes in various configurations of the robots. The mechanism and mobility characteristics of the proposed module have been verified with the aid of simulations and experiments on real robot prototype.

Abstract

Present visual servoing approaches are instance specific i.e. they control camera motion between two views of the same object. However, in practical scenarios where a robot is required to handle various instances of a category, classical visual servoing techniques are less suitable. We formulate across instance visual servoing as a pose induction and pose alignment problem. Initially, the desired pose given for any known instance is transferred to the novel instance through pose induction. Then the pose alignment problem is solved by estimating the current pose using the part aware keypoints reconstruction followed by a pose based visual servoing (PBVS) iteration. To tackle large variation in appearance across object instances in a category, we employ visual features that uniquely correspond to locations of object's parts in images. These part-aware keypoints are learned from annotated images using a convolutional neural network (CNN). Advantages of using such part-aware semantics are two-fold. Firstly, it conceals the illumination and textural variations from the visual servoing algorithm. Secondly, semantic keypoints enables us to match descriptors across instances accurately. We validate the efficacy of our approach through experiments in simulation as well as on a quadcopter. Our approach results in acceptable desired camera pose and smooth velocity profile. We also show results for large camera transformations with no overlap between current and desired pose for 3D objects, which is desirable in servoing context.

Abstract

This paper considers the problem of finding pose matches between trajectories of multiple robots in their respective coordinate frames or equivalent matches between trajectories obtained during different sessions. Pose correspondences between trajectories are mediated by common landmarks represented in a topological map lacking distinct metric coordinates. Despite such lack of explicit metric level associations, we mine preliminary pose level correspondences between trajectories through a novel multi-scale heat-kernel descriptor and correspondence graph framework. These serve as an improved initialization for ICP (Iterative Closest Point) to yield dense pose correspondences. We perform extensive analysis of the proposed method under varying levels of pose and landmark noise and showcase its superiority in obtaining pose matches in comparison with standard ICP like methods. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work of the kind that brings in elements from spectral graph theory to solve the problem of pose correspondences in a multi-robotic setting and differentiates itself from other works.

Abstract

Reconstruction of dynamic objects in a scene is a highly challenging problem in the context of SLAM. In this paper, we present a real-time monocular object localization system that estimates the shape and pose of dynamic objects in real-time, using video frames captured from a moving monocular camera. Although the problem seems to be ill-posed, we demonstrate that, by incorporating prior knowledge of the object category, we can obtain more detailed instance-level reconstructions. As opposed to earlier object model specifications, the proposed shape-prior model leads to the formulation of a Bundle Adjustment-like optimization problem for simultaneous shape and pose estimation. Leveraging recent successes of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) for object keypoint localization, we present a CNN architecture that performs precise keypoint localization. We then demonstrate how these keypoints can be used to recover 3D object properties, while accounting for any 2D localization errors and self-occlusion. We show significant performance improvements compared to state-of-the-art monocular competitors for 2D keypoint detection, as well as 3D localization and reconstruction of dynamic objects.

Abstract

We present PRVO, a probabilistic variant of Reciprocal Velocity Obstacle (RVO) for decentralized multi-robot navigation under uncertainty. PRVO characterizes the space of velocities that would allow each robot to fulfill its share in collision avoidance with a specified probability. PRVO is modeled as chance constraints over the velocity level constraints defined by RVO and takes into account the uncertainty associated with both state estimation as well as the actuation of each robot. Since chance constraints are in general computationally intractable, we propose a series of reformulations which when combined with time scaling based concepts leads to a closed form characterization of solution space of PRVO for a given probability of collision avoidance. We validate our formulation through numerical simulations in which we highlight the advantages of PRVO over the related existing formulations

Abstract

This paper presents a modular in-pipeline climbing robot with a novel compliant foldable OmniCrawler mechanism. The robot has a series of 3 compliant foldable OmniCrawler modules interconnected by links via passive joints. The circular cross-section of the module enables a holonomic motion to facilitate the alignment of the robot in the direction of bends. Additionally, the crawler mechanism provides a fair amount of traction, even on slippery pipe surfaces. These advantages of crawler modules have been further augmented by incorporating active compliance in the module, which helps to negotiate sharp bends in small diameter pipes. Introducing compliance in the crawler module with a single chain-lugs assembly is the the key novelty of this design. For the desirable pipe diameter and curvature of the bends, the spring stiffness value for each passive joint is determined by formulating a constrained optimization problem using the quasi-static model of the robot. Moreover, a minimum friction coefficient value between the module-pipe surface which can be vertically climbed by the robot without slipping is estimated. The numerical simulation results have further been validated by experiments on real robot prototype.